Here's why the case of Carla Foster proves that in the UK, abortion is essentially criminal
By now I’m sure you’re familiar with the case of Carla Foster, a 44-year-old mother of three who took abortion pills at home past the legal time limitations, resulting in the miscarriage of a 32-34 week old foetus. This week, she was sentenced to 28 months in prison under an Act from 1861. She will serve 14 months in custody, separated from her three children, one of whom the judge described as having “special needs, which means that he is particularly reliant upon your love and support”. The judge also made plain that Foster was vulnerable. The abortion took place during the first lockdown, a frightening and confusing time for us all, and a time when telemedicine abortion care was introduced as in-person clinics closed. Foster had moved back in with her former but now estranged partner, before discovering she was pregnant with a child from another man.
When we think about a country’s extreme response to abortion, we might think about America. A year ago, the Supreme Court repealed Roe v Wade, the constitutional right to abortion, and it is now outlawed in numerous states, including in cases of rape and incest. We might think of Poland, where, recently, a woman died because doctors denied her the abortion she needed to save her life. But we forget about the problem in our own backyard. In the UK, abortion is only permitted via exceptions to the law, which include permission from two doctors and within a specified time period. Underpinning that access remains the stark reality that abortion is essentially criminal.
And that makes vulnerable women even more vulnerable. Because rarely is abortion a straight-forward decision (although it can be). As the American writer Audre Lorde wrote: “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives”. Other factors inevitably come into play. These can be economic, especially during a cost of living crisis. They might be the emotional and familial landscape of her existing life – most women who have abortions are already mothers. She might be in an abusive relationship where she feels unable to raise a(nother) child in an unsafe environment, while knowing it will make the possibility of leaving even harder. In the often high stakes and fraught decision-making process, time can pass, and women in desperate need of help find themselves facing prison sentences – something we'd assume was more Texas than Stoke-on-Trent.
But perhaps the reason the imprisonment of Carla Foster has demanded so much attention is because it brings to light two deeply troubling realities for women in the UK, ones repeatedly ignored by successive governments. The first is the ongoing incarceration of vulnerable women. Most women in prison are there for non-violent offences, and, according to data from the Prison Reform Trust, have experienced domestic violence either in a relationship as an adult or as a child. Instead of asking how such women might be prevented from committing crimes in the first place, we take away their children, families and communities, the very things that have the best chance of rehabilitating them. And then we punish trauma with more trauma. Addressing Foster directly in his summing up, Justice Pepperall wrote that he “accepted… you are plagued by nightmares and flashbacks to seeing your dead child’s face”.
The second issue is the reality that abortion in the UK is defined by its criminality, not as a form of healthcare. That distinction is crucial. Because that is the difference between respecting a woman’s choice, and her need for medical and mental health support, and removing her freedoms many times over, controlling her life, labelling her "guilty", and filling her with shame. The criminalisation of abortion is state-sanctioned misogyny.
On the eve of the repeal of Roe v Wade, I spent time in the American Midwest talking to reproductive justice activists. What I learned was this: someone, somewhere is always chipping away at women's freedoms. Sometimes in obvious ways, like removing laws. Other times in ways so small we might miss them – but our opponents don't miss an opportunity. The day after the reversal of Roe, a British MP stood up in the House of Commons and suggested women “don’t have absolute right to bodily autonomy”. If Parliament does not act to decriminalise abortion now, the chip, chip, chipping will one day result in the complete destruction, and we might not even notice. Until, that is, the dreaded day we find ourselves having to make an impossible decision.
If the case of Carla Foster is a nasty shock, let it also be an urgent reminder: vulnerable women in this country are, at best, forgotten, and at very worst persecuted. We can't claim to be much better than America or Poland while we still have laws that seek to control a woman's body, and then punish them in their most desperate moments. The failure of a society to support women who need it is evident in other areas, too: appallingly low rape convictions; a sexist and abusive police culture; an ongoing domestic abuse epidemic. On all fronts, vulnerable women are let down by the very institutions that are meant to support them. Our government may claim a belief in equality, they may flout the signs of progress, but it's up to us to look beyond the window dressing, to be vigilant to the chip-chip-chipping. The case of Carla Foster has reminded us just how vulnerable we all are.
Pre-order Marisa Bate's new novel, 'Wild Hope', out 22 June, here.
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